By Dan Ambrose: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. will be fighting in front of a sold out T-Mobile Arena on May 6 in their fight in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight is officially sold out as of Friday with 20,000 tickets sold to fans. It didn’t take long for the mega-fight to sell out, as the tickets have only been on the market for a short while. But it shows how much interest there is with the boxing public in the Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. fight.
It’s caught on with a lot of fans. This is a fight that the casual boxing fans appear to have embraced more so than the hardcore fans, many of which see it as another example of Golden Boy picking out a fighter from the past to face Canelo rather than a top fighter from this era like Gennady Golovkin.
The Canelo vs. Chavez Jr (50-2-1, 32 KOs) contest is perceived a ‘business fight’ by many fans rather than a match involved for sporting purposes. Indeed, Canelo (48-1-1, 34 KOs) is moving up 2 divisions to face Chavez Jr. at a catch-weight of 164 ½ pounds in the super middleweight division.
The undercard of the Canelo-Chavez Jr. is pretty sparse right now with former light welterweight contender Lucas Matthysse (37-4, 34 KOs) fighting Emanuel Taylor (20-4, 14 Kos) being the only other fight on the PPV side. Matthysse-Taylor is not really a PPV worthy fight. Taylor has been getting beaten a lot lately, and Matthysse is coming off of a 10th round knockout loss to Viktor Postol over a year ago.
The Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight will be taking place on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo on May 6. The fight will be sold on HBO pay-per-view. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya is already talking about a rematch in September even before the first punch has been thrown for their May 6 fight.
De La Hoya wants to capitalize on the great deal of interest in the fight. However, in order to sell a second Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight, they’re May 6 match will need to be close enough for the boxing public to want to see them go at it a second time.
De La Hoya is already taking criticism for his plans on matching Canelo against Miguel Cotto in a rematch this December. Canelo already beat Cotto in 2015 by a 12 round decision. Canelo proved in that fight that Cotto was too small to hurt him. Fighting him a second time is viewed as largely a redundant move, much like we saw with Manny Pacquiao recently being matched by his promoter Bob Arum against Tim Bradley for an unneeded third fight.
What De La Hoya has to be careful to avoid is making Canelo seem like the type of fighter that is only interested in easy ‘money grab’ type of fights like we’ve been seeing from him lately in his mismatches against Liam Smith, Amir Khan, Miguel Cotto, James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo. Those were all fights where Canelo was the favorite going in. Golden Boy could hurt the popularity of Canelo if they only put him in sure thing fights against fighters that have no chance of beating him. Chavez Jr. is already perceived as having no chance of beating Canelo by some in the boxing world. The catch-weight of 164.5 lbs. greatly favors Canele largely because Chavez Jr. has shown that he can’t even make 168 on a consistent basis. In the last three years, Chavez Jr. has only make 168 three times. He’s failed to make the weight in three of his fights.
“Big fights sell, and as anyone can see from the fact that we sold out Las Vegas’ biggest boxing venue less than 10 days after tickets became available, Canelo-Chavez, Jr. is a huge fight,” said De La Hoya. “Now that T-Mobile Arena is full, we will soon announce venues for showing the fight on closed circuit for fans still planning to come to celebrate in Las Vegas, and fans can of course see the fight in the comfort of their own homes on HBO Pay-Per-View.”
Having Chavez Jr. available for the Canelo fight is a move that gives Golden Boy a chance for a big money fight for May 6. That option wasn’t there before. If they hadn’t been able to get Chavez Jr. for May 6, then they would have likely had to pick from one of these three fighters: Billy Joe Saunders, David Lemieux or Gabriel Rosado.
Those were all guys that were in the running for the May 6 fight against Canelo. None of those fighters would have likely brought in a lot of PPV buys. Once Canelo gets past Chavez Jr. and however many rematches they have, then Golden Boy is going to need to be more risk taking with their red-haired star of they want to keep bringing in the big money with him.
That means that Golden Boy will need to match Canelo against the quality fighters for a change like Golovkin, Daniel Jacobs, Jermall Charlo, and Demerius Andrade. All of those guys would jump at the chance to fight Golovkin if Golden Boy would let them. So far, they’ve been very careful of who they match Canelo against since his close call against Erislandy Lara in 2014.